CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has chosen Platform's workload management solutions to manage its recently built cloud computing environment, reportedly largest of its kind.

CERN's cloud computing environment serves as a research platform for about 10,000 scientists from 85 countries. The organization's member scientists collaboratively perform research in the field of particle physics.

The cloud infrastructure has to be able to handle about 15 petabytes of data per year processed by about 60,000 processor cores and CERN has deployed Platform's LSF workload management solution for high performance computing environments and ISF Adaptive Cluster, which makes static clusters and grids dynamic, creating shared computing environments that use heterogeneous physical and virtual compute capacity.

"For CERN's cloud computing initiative, we needed an infrastructure that would support our existing grid in a heterogeneous environment that could manage both the VMs and physical machines necessary for our researchers to run projects smoothly since their computing needs change constantly as the data is processed," Tony Cass, CERN's group leader of fabric infrastructure and operations, said in a statement.

"Platform's ISF and ISF Adaptive Cluster, combined with the Platform LSF grid workload management solution already in place, will provide our users the scalability and flexibility they need to manage their clusters and share data center resources while adhering to our requirements for open standards."

Deployment of Platform solutions extends the partnership between the vendor and the scientific organization, which has deployed the solutions in the past for other purposes.

CERN was founded in 1954. Among its most well-known accomplishments is the development of HTTP networking protocol and creation of the most powerful particle accelerator in the world - the Large Hadron Collider.

Another large cloud infrastructure for scientific research is being built across the Atlantic Ocean in the US, where two Department of Energy research laboratories are developing a private cloud with the goal of exploring the possibility of running scientific applications on a shared IT infrastructure. DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., each received $16 million from the federal government to build the cloud.